Slocock tightened his finger on the trigger, feeling it click softly. The tiniest further bit of squeezing, and the Cindermaker would leap in his hand, Redlaw’s head would jerk back, a geyser of brain and skull fragments would exit at the rear, and that would be that.
Slocock’s mind buzzed like a nest of wasps. He could do this. He could do this. No repercussions. A seven-figure salary. A life of idleness and sybaritic self-indulgence, in exchange for another man’s life.
But...
He would know. Forever. It would always be with him, what he did here, if he did it. It would never leave him. He would never forgive himself.
But then could he ever forgive himself if he didn’t kill Redlaw? If he failed Lambourne’s “final test”?
“Come on,” Redlaw urged. “Put me out of my misery.”
The muzzle of the Cindermaker trembled ever so slightly.
“Come on.”
Slocock screwed his face up, half turning his head away.
“Come on.”
He shut his eyes.
No.
“No,” he said.
The gun dropped.
“I knew it,” said Redlaw. “I knew you couldn’t. Coward.”
Slocock lifted the gun again, lowered it again. He decocked it, then tossed it aside in disgust. Shame flooded through him. He had believed he was beyond morality, much as Lambourne was, but it seemed there was a line even he could not cross. It galled him to think he might, after all, be ordinary, as much in thrall to the taboos of society as the next man.
“Tell you what,” Redlaw said, “how about I make it easier for you? Untie me and we’ll fight, hand to hand. You’re half my age and trained, but still, you won’t find me a pushover. If you can’t shoot me when I’m a trussed-up victim, maybe you can beat me to death when I’m presenting a threat to you. Then you’ll be able to walk out of here with your head held high, higher than if you’d simply played firing squad with me. How about that?”
Slocock grabbed at the offer, almost absurdly grateful. “Yes. Yes, that might work. In the heat of combat...”
“Exactly. In the heat of combat, anything could happen.”
Slocock knelt beside the chair. Within moments the electrical flex was undone and Redlaw was standing.
“Can I have a minute to get my circulation back?” he said. “Can’t fight if I can’t make a fist.”
“Sure.” Slocock began limbering up, rolling his shoulders, cracking his knuckles.
“You know, it all makes sense now,” Redlaw said, massaging his wrists and hands. “I should have realised there was a connection between you and Macarthur. It was highly convenient, you being there to pull us out of Parliament Square. I thought so at the time, but chose to overlook it. But if the shadies who were chasing us had told Macarthur where we were, then she could have phoned Lambourne...”
“...and he could have phoned me to tell me to be on the lookout for you,” said Slocock. “Which he did. Nicely pieced together.”
“Too late to be of any use. I could kick myself.”
“Leave that to me. I’ll be happy to oblige.” The cocaine was hot in Slocock’s veins now, like magma, mingling with a surge of pre-fight adrenaline. He was supreme. He was unstoppable. Redlaw, this broken-down crock, was about to receive a beating like no other. Kill the old geezer with his bare hands? Yeah, Slocock could see himself managing that all right. “Ready now?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Said your prayers?”
“If He’s even listening, He may not want to hear them.”
“I’ll try and make it quick.”
“Less talk. Do your worst.”
Slocock triple-stepped forwards, an angel of death, a lightning storm in the form of a man. His first furious flurry of punches all found their mark. Redlaw’s defences were clumsy. He barely seemed to know how to mount an effective block. And he was slow—a tortoise, compared to Slocock. He reeled back under the onslaught with a baffled look that Slocock was familiar with, having seen it on countless opponents’ faces in the past. What is this? How can this be happening? What am I up against?
Slocock kept the pressure up. The jabs, hooks and roundhouses landed thick and fast, driving Redlaw backwards until he butted into a wall. Redlaw was reduced to covering his head with both arms, the most basic method possible of warding off the attack. Slocock switched from head shots to body shots. His legs came into play, battering Redlaw’s torso and hips. A spinning kick delivered the full stop to a long and complicated sentence of violence, scooping Redlaw’s feet out from under him and leaving him flat on the floor.
Slocock danced back out of range as Redlaw first clambered to his knees, then got to his feet, clutching the wall for support.
Patches of Redlaw’s face had the rough, reddened look of tenderised beef, and he was bleeding from nose and mouth. He wiped a hand across his lips, smearing the blood sideways. He spat a wad of pink sputum onto the floor.
“Yes,” he said. “You’re not bad, are you? Keep it up and you’ll definitely be the death of me.”
“You can always fight back, you know,” Slocock said. “This doesn’t have to be so one-sided.”
“Oh, I mean to. I may not have your fancy moves but for two decades I’ve been dealing with creatures faster than you, and clawed to boot. I just wanted to establish the parameters here—how hard you can hit and all that.”
“And how hard do I hit?”
“Very hard,” said Redlaw, with feeling. “But then so do I.”
He charged at Slocock, bull-like and with a surprising turn of speed. His punches had some serious weight to them, bludgeoning Slocock’s midriff. His left fist was doing most of the work so Slocock concentrated on blocking on that side. When an opportunity opened up he dug in with an elbow strike to Redlaw’s right trapezius, leaning back so as to give it full force. Redlaw grunted but didn’t relent. A second elbow strike closer to the shoulder, though, brought a cry from him and he staggered away, right arm hanging limp.
Numbed? No. Slocock got the impression the arm was previously injured and still giving Redlaw grief. Therefore a vulnerable spot. Good.
That was where he focused on next, forcing Redlaw to turn out his left side and take most of the punishment there. At an angle, Redlaw’s retaliatory options were limited, but he succeeded in sneaking a foot stamp past Slocock’s guard, shearing his heel down the side of Slocock’s ankle.
It was hobbling agony, as though part of the talus bone had been snapped off, and Slocock couldn’t help but recoil. Redlaw threw himself at him, catching him in a clinch from behind. Using his own momentum he slammed Slocock’s forehead against the edge of the parapet. He did it a second time for good measure, and then Slocock hacked backwards with an elbow, a flailing, undisciplined blow, but it did the trick, catching Redlaw full in the sternum and knocking the wind out of his sails.
“Oww, fucking oww,” Slocock said, clamping palm-heel to forehead. Khun Sarawong would have told him not to show pain. He could almost hear the gnomic little instructor’s voice: Know pain but do not show pain. Well, tough shit. Slocock felt like his skull had been cracked open, and it fucking well hurt.
He rounded on Redlaw, who was clutching his ribs, bent double.
“You old fuck,” he snarled. “That was hardly fair.”
“Have I ticked you off?” Redlaw wheezed.
“Yes, you have.”
“Are you angry?”
“Yes, I am.”
“What are you waiting for, then? Finish this.”
Slocock beelined for Redlaw and almost immediately had him bound up in a clinch, a proper one, head to head like fighters should, with his hands locked round the back of Redlaw’s neck. His right knee pistoned up and down, ramming into the other man’s face. If he kept this going long enough, Redlaw would be done for.
A searing pain rose between Slocock’s legs, as though a spike was being driven up into his groin. Redlaw had his balls in his hand and was squeezing as
if to burst them. Slocock’s head stretched back in a rictus of excruciation, mouth working soundlessly. Redlaw then cracked his brow down onto Slocock’s upturned jaw, breaking the clinch.
Both men staggered away from each other, then clashed again, like magnets that could not be kept apart. Slocock was utterly content now with the prospect of killing Redlaw. The man deserved it. He had, in a perverse way, earned it. Slocock had no intention of ending the fight until Redlaw’s lifeless body lay at his feet.
Together they lurched towards the parapet, colliding with it sideways. All at once, to his surprise, Slocock found himself being hoisted off the floor. Redlaw had lifted him up, using every ounce of strength he could muster, and panicky thoughts raced through Slocock’s mind. This move wasn’t in the muay thai rulebook, this wasn’t something he had been trained for, this was an attack he had no defence against. He struggled, but Redlaw had him poised on the parapet, teetering over the pit, off-balance, legs scissoring wildly in the air. He lashed out but the blows had no power behind them, and anyway there was a maddened, implacable gleam in Redlaw’s eyes that spoke of someone whom nothing would deter.
In a shocking, crushing instant Slocock realised he had lost. His life was in Redlaw’s hands and not, as it should have been, the other way round.
“No,” he said. “Please. I didn’t... The gun...”
“I know,” said Redlaw through bloodied, swollen lips. “When I was at your mercy, you couldn’t go through with it. Sad to say, I don’t have the same inhibition. Not any more.”
He shoved. Let go.
Slocock plummeted.
The machine guns started firing before he even hit the floor, and they didn’t stop firing until every Fraxinus round in their belts had been expended and the Conservative Member of Parliament for Chesham and Amersham, the Right Honourable Giles Slocock, was little more than a slurry of bone shards and pulped flesh.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Victory. But it couldn’t have felt less like it.
With the cacophony of the machine guns still ringing in his ears, Redlaw stumbled over to pick up his Cindermaker. Next thing he knew, he was prone on the floor, the gun still inches from his hand. He groped for it, but it seemed just that bit too far away. The observatory was seesawing under him like a ship in heavy seas. Everything hurt, every part of him. He closed his eyes for a moment, hoping that when he opened them the pain would have gone away and the world would have stopped lurching nauseatingly up and down.
It was more than a moment. The sun was considerably higher, the sky brighter and bluer, when he next looked up. Somehow he summoned the wherewithal to stand. Somehow, Cindermaker in hand, he made it down the staircase to the exit.
He trudged downhill through dewy grass to the mansion. He crossed a shrubbery-fringed lawn. He crunched over a driveway covered in a drift of snow-white pea gravel. He dragged his feet up seven stone steps to a baronial front door.
Which stood ajar. Redlaw nudged it further open. He stepped inside, into a grand hall embraced by curving staircases, with a leaded skylight, Grecian statuary in alcoves, fresh lilies bursting crisply from crystal vases. There was a hush. Not quite silence. Unmistakably the place was occupied, there was someone other than him present. But nevertheless a waiting stillness, an ominous tranquillity.
Redlaw listened. Soft sounds reached him, coming from a doorway leading off from the hall. He approached warily, gun ready.
The door opened onto a drawing room. Twenty-foot ceiling. Moulded cornices. Murals on every wall, mimicking Georgian Arcadian landscapes. Lush drapery. A decorated piano.
And a body sprawled on the marble floor, twitching, uttering hiccupy little gasps.
Redlaw padded closer.
Nathaniel Lambourne lay on his back. He had one hand pressed to his neck, and his face bore a ghastly grey pallor. Beneath his head blood had pooled out in a circle like some obscene vermilion halo. His eyes rolled in their sockets, seeing everything and nothing, then all at once found Redlaw and fixed and focused on him. His gaze shone brightly, alive with horror.
“Oh, God,” Lambourne said. “Oh, thank God. I need help. The bleeding... I can’t stop it. I’m slowing it, holding it in, but... Ambulance. There’s a phone over there. Use it. Call.”
Redlaw didn’t move. Lambourne’s hand was slick with blood. It was oozing out between his fingers in slow, thick pulses. A wound to the carotid. Some kind of incision, a shallow one, but not so shallow that the blood could coagulate and form a seal.
A cut designed to cause a protracted, lingering death.
“Please,” said Lambourne. “I can’t get up. I don’t dare. I’ve tried and I start to black out. Help me. I’ll give you anything. Anything you want.”
“Bring back Illyria Strakosha,” Redlaw said. “Then I’ll help you.”
Lambourne’s eyes darkened. Resignation set in. “That’s how it’s going to be, is it?”
“That’s how it’s going to be.”
“Ha.” Bitter. Mirthless. “So Giles bottled out, did he? Let you live.”
“I’d hardly say ‘let.’ I goaded him into untying me. Then we settled it like equals, only I was more equal than him. Who did this to you?”
“Who do you think? Funny thing is, I didn’t see it coming. In every way, didn’t see it coming. I turned my back for a second, and...”
He coughed, and the blood seeped out a little more freely. He did his best to keep the pressure on his neck, stem the flow, but he was fighting a losing battle. He knew it too. It was in his eyes: he had only minutes left.
“It was the letter opener. From the escritoire. Sharp as anything, that is. I nicked myself on it more than once, back in the days when people sent letters. She—she sneaked up on me from behind...”
“Macarthur,” said Redlaw.
“Yes. Of course.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. I don’t sodding know. How should I? We were associates, that’s what I thought. She was useful when it came to the designs for Solarville. A valuable resource. Then to turn round and stab me...” He sighed as if exasperated. The sheer effrontery of it!
“It happens. I’m getting used to betrayal. No one’s worth trusting.”
“But she’s got everything she could have wanted, that’s what I don’t understand. She was all for Solarville from the start. Supported the idea the whole way. She even has the code.”
“Code? What code?”
Lambourne was failing, fading. Redlaw brusquely shook him.
“Macarthur, Lambourne. What code has she got? What for?”
The eyes drifted, then refocused.
“She absolutely detests them.” The industrialist’s voice was a papery rustle, like accounts books being flicked through. “Vampires. With a vengeance. You must know she does.”
It was news to Redlaw, and his face showed it.
“No?” said Lambourne. “God, you should hear her sometimes. Maybe it’s just with me, in confidence, but the way she speaks about them. The spite. The venom. Words like ‘vermin.’ ‘Scum,’ ‘worms,’ ‘leeches.’ Worse. It’s just as well she’s in administration at SHADE, stuck behind a desk. Otherwise she’d be out there exterminating every vamp she sees.”
“Where is she now? Is she still here?”
“Gone,” said Lambourne. “I heard her car.”
“Gone where?”
“How should I know? Do I look like I’d care? Bitch has killed me. She can go to Hell as far as I’m concerned.”
His face clouded.
“Redlaw?”
“Yes?”
“You believe, don’t you?”
“In God?”
“Yes.”
Lambourne seemed to be seeking some sort of benediction. Reassurance in his final moments. Extreme unction.
“You’ll get what’s coming to you,” Redlaw said.
“I don’t...” Lambourne’s grip on his neck loosened. The blood frothed forth. “You know what this feels like? It feels like
... Like falling.”
His hand sank to the floor, limp.
“Falling.”
His jaw slackened and his eyes glazed. His whole body went rigid, and up out of his throat came the gurgle of his last breath, the archetypal death rattle, sounding much like a dispirited groan.
Redlaw stayed with the industrialist’s corpse for a while. In death, Lambourne had ceased to resemble himself. His face had lost its distinguishing features and become just a face, could be almost anyone’s. The human body was merely a vehicle. The soul—and even a rapacious billionaire had one—was what gave it animation and character.
And right now, if there was any justice, Nathaniel Lambourne’s soul was burning.
She absolutely detests them.
The remark went round and round in Redlaw’s head as he pondered his next move.
Why had Macarthur killed Lambourne? What had possessed her to snatch up the letter opener and slit his neck? It was almost beyond comprehension. Lambourne didn’t appear to have provoked her in any way. It had come seemingly out of the blue. What did she stand to gain from murdering him? Nothing. In fact, she had plenty to lose.
The sound of a car pulling up outside broke in on his deliberations. Through a window Redlaw saw a woman get out of a small Skoda, carrying newspapers under one arm, and walk round the back of the car to fetch groceries from the boot. Her age, dress and general demeanour all said ‘housekeeper.’ As she mounted the front steps, a frown of confusion creased her forehead. The open door.
Redlaw quickly undid the catch on the window and eased up the casement. He slipped over the sill into the flowerbed outside, even as the housekeeper entered the mansion and called out, loudly but tentatively, “Mr Lambourne? Sir?”
His initial thought was to take the housekeeper’s car, but he remembered seeing her pocket the key. Instead, he stole over to the stable block, which had been converted into an open-fronted garage. Where horses had once snorted and whinnied, now a row of costly cars stood, some contemporary, some vintage, all with their front ends facing out and their bodywork gleamingly polished.
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